by Socialist Project | June 7, 2016

The Leap Manifesto is, in a way, Canada’s version of the burst of Left and socialist energies that have come with the Bernie Sanders campaign in the Democratic Party in the U.S. and the Jeremy Corbyn leadership win in the Labour Party in Britain. As with these, the explosion of popular interest reflects general disquiet about the limits of recent protests demanding changes from the state but having no strategy to transform it, on the one hand; and disappointments with electoral politics and social democratic parties that only seem to reinforce neoliberalism, on the other.

The Manifesto gained national prominence through a favourable resolution passed at the recent NDP Convention encouraging discussion of it within the party. But the Leap Manifesto also has an independent existence coming out of climate change struggles in Canada over the last decade, particularly with respect to pipelines development to further increase extraction of oil from the tar sands and First Nations sovereignty and ecological justice demands.

The Discussion Paper below from theSocialist Project invites debate on the specifics of the Leap Manifesto’s proposals. This will unavoidably involve serious reflection on the complex politics of building a social force – and literally inventing new strategies – able to address the urgency of climate change, First Nations struggles over land and self-government, and the authoritarian neoliberalism spreading in Canada.

Frustrations with what has come to be called ‘neoliberalism’ – the hyper-capitalism of stunning inequalities, ever-deeper commodification of all aspects of our lives, environmental degradation, corporate-driven trade pacts, and the narrowing of substantive democracy – have seriously discredited traditional political parties. This has often included parties on the social democratic left.

Canada’s New Democratic Party (NDP) seemed immune from this for some time. But in the aftermath of their disastrous showing in the 2015 federal election, and the dramatic developments at the NDP’s Edmonton convention in April, the federal NDP has been drawn into the maelstrom. Delegates at the convention did the previously unthinkable: they not only refused to give their current leader, Tom Mulcair, the traditional strong vote of confidence, but for the first time in party history directly rejected the incumbent. The rejection clearly extended to a rebuke of the architects of the party’s recent electoral platforms, notably expressed in the extent of support that delegates registered for the social movement-inspired Leap Manifesto, with its focus on ecology, indigenous rights, and social justice, all downplayed in the fall NDP campaign.

Reigniting Debates?

For the socialist left (which has in large part abstained from extensive participation in the NDP or participated only marginally), the rebellion within the NDP has reignited debates about working inside the NDP. In particular, it has raised the question of whether the delegitimation of the party elite and the emergence of the Leap Manifesto signal a new opportunity to join others in moving the NDP significantly to the left. Political developments in the U.S. and Britain have given added weight to this. Bernie Sanders, running as a Democrat in the U.S. primaries, and Jeremy Corbyn, winning the leadership of the British Labour Party, have succeeded well beyond initial expectations, with the socialist left as surprised as anyone else. Sanders and Corbyn have operated inside their respective parties as ‘outsiders’ challenging the party establishment and their accommodations to neoliberalism. This is bound to suggest to Canadian socialists that there may be some new potential in a strategy for rebuilding the political space for socialist politics inside the NDP.

This challenge to the socialist left involves a set of further questions. How should we assess the Leap Manifesto – is it a leap to an anti-capitalist position or a limited though significant step away from the neoliberal faith in markets? Is entering the NDP and participating in electoral politics the inherent trap some socialists claim it is? Should we instead focus on building the movements? What distinguishes social democratic from socialist politics at this time? And how, in the light of responses to the above, should we react to the Leap initiative?

The contention here, elaborated in the sections that follow, is that the Leap Manifesto represents an important contribution to thinking about alternatives to neoliberalism and the effort to make positive social change. Whatever its limits, the Manifesto opens the door to a more radical politics, and to what can no longer be avoided: the question of capitalism itself. If, however, its implications are reduced primarily to channel the energy of the Left into the NDP, it may well end up as another squandered opportunity to further the egalitarian, environmental, and democratic goals of the Left, and to advance the organizational means of developing the individual, collective, and institutional capacities to transcend capitalism.

The Leap Manifesto

The Leap Manifesto’s presentation to the NDP convention elicited not only a sharply negative response from some new as well as old elites within the NDP, but an astonishingly overwrought backlash from much of the mainstream media. Far from expiring with the usual news cycle, these are attacks still being ramped up. Thus a full month after the convention, theGlobe and Mail ‘s veteran political commentator, Jeffrey Simpson, launched a full frontal attack on the ‘Leapistas’, as a “grouping of people with absolutely no idea of how to run a modern economy, deeply skeptical of most elements of the globalized world, hostile to free market economics, except of the organic-market variety on Saturday mornings, quite anti-American, committed to saving the environment at the expense of crucifying the economy.” Earlier “dreamers and wreckers” inside the NDP like “the Wafflers of bygone years” had been “stifled” by “every leader of the NDP, starting with David Lewis a long time ago,” but now that the party is weak, “they flourish.”

The Leap Manifesto had not faced anything like such hostile reactions when it was first released during the 2015 federal election campaign. The sudden hysteria seems all the more strange given that its prime defender at the NDP convention was the Canadian political icon and media darling Stephen Lewis, who had himself played the leading role in ‘stifling’ the Waffle in the Ontario NDP. Indeed, this well may be a mark of how far the party has moved to embrace neoliberalism, and the concern of the mainstream political class to keep it there. One of the Manifesto’s key architects is Avi Lewis (Stephen’s son and David’s grandson). He has explained that the modesty of its proposals reflects both its origins in a consensus among the diverse range of activists invited to a political gathering in the spring of 2015, and its hopes of building an even broader national consensus “to bring us together.” In any case, the NDP convention did not actually adopt the Manifesto; it only passed a compromise resolution encouraging NDP members and constituency associations to participate in community discussions about its contents. This was in line with Leap’s self-expressed goal of provoking a ‘non-partisan’ discussion across the country not confined to activists and any particular party.

In fact, the Leap Manifesto’s contents are ‘hardly radical’, as was pointed out byThe Star‘s Tom Walkom, one of few media commentators who has kept his head about it. In both tone and content, the Leap Manifesto’s proposals are strikingly moderate compared to earlier attempts at changing the NDP, especially that of the Waffle Movement of the late 60s and early 70s, with its call for an ‘independent socialist Canada’, and even the ambitions of the New Politics Initiative of the early 2000s as it emerged out of the anti-globalization initiative. In directing itself particularly to the environment crisis, it holds back from advocating the over-all economic planning that would be required and what that would entail not only in terms of fundamentally challenging corporate property rights but also in terms of democratic and participatory planning structures. Nor does it tackle the radical steps that would have to be taken to overturn the incredibly unequal distribution of income and wealth that Canada, like the rest of the capitalist world, has experienced in the last several decades of neoliberalism. There is next to no acknowledgement of the economic and social reorientation that would necessarily be entailed, given Canada’s continental and global economic integration via ‘free trade’, as well as Canada’s contribution to the energy and resource needs of the American empire.

The language of the Manifesto, reaching in vain for entry points into mainstream political debate, falls far short of the references to ‘class’, ‘socialism’ and ‘political revolution’ that pepper the speeches of Bernie Sanders in his Democratic primary campaign. That Sanders has incurred little criticism in the Canadian media, while the NDP is slammed for even being open to discussing the Leap Manifesto, is especially remarkable. What may be worrying the many enemies of the ‘Leapistas’ is precisely how many primary victories – based on the hard work of tens of thousands of active supporters as well as funds from a few million small donors – which Sanders has chalked up against the likes of a Hillary Clinton. While Sanders has had a surprisingly easy ride in the U.S. media overall, Keynesian liberals like Paul Krugman in theNew York Timeshave been sharply critical of him for being too hard on Hillary while “waving away [the] limits” of political change in an “utterly unrealistic” manner.

Those attacking the ‘Leapistas’ here may be taking their cue more from the unrelentingly hostile British media treatment of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party, despite that (or perhaps because?) he attracted some 300,000 new members to the party – unheard of in well over a half a century among any of the NDP’s sister social democratic parties. This media hysteria has reached such a height that the political correspondent of theFinancial Timesof London recently went so far as to contend that Corbyn “should not have been in a position to become Labour leader because he should not have been a Labour MP” (as he has been for over three decades) because a parliamentary party should have no room for those who “reject capitalism or war in principle.” The Labour Party’s ability to ‘hang on’, as Corbyn put it, in the recent local and regional elections in the UK in the face of such vitriol is itself very significant.

Could the overwrought hostility to the ‘Leapistas’ be indicative of a concern to stop the socialist contagion at the Canadian border? Here we come to the main political point: the Leap Manifesto has actually come to embody the spirit of radicalism in Canada today. This isn’t so much about its progressive policies, such as the rejection of neoliberalism and austerity, the call for a moratorium on the expansion of pipelines, retrofitting of housing, expansion of public transit and public infrastructure, or the sensitivity to the impact of environmental policies on workers as part of ecologically-responsible production. Nor is it just a matter of extending ecology issues to social justice and other issues – ‘connecting the dots’ as Manifesto advocates have put it. As important as all this is, what seems most significant has been the Manifesto’s identification with opposition to politics as usual, the anti-democratic subservience to economic elites, and the disappointments – and indeed betrayals – from the party and parliamentary institutions that claim to represent us.

What this spirit of radicalism represents is precisely the recognition that the rhetorical emperors of ‘realism’ in the face of global neoliberalism have no clothes. It is not ‘realistic’ governments that ‘run the modern economy’; it is the capitalist economy that runsthem – not in the sense of corporations or bankers directly telling them what to do but rather in the sense of coping with the volatility and even chaos of economic events (it is no accident that the favourite self-description of the U.S. Treasury for the past 25 years has been that of ‘firefighters’). This spirit of radicalism is for very good reason ‘deeply skeptical of most elements of the globalized world’ and ‘hostile to free market economics’, and if it also seems ‘quite anti-American’, this is because of the massively unequal negative effects and multiple crises that a competitive globalized capitalism has wrought under the aegis of the U.S. empire. This spirit of radicalism is indeed oriented to looking kindly on organic markets – and not only on Saturday mornings – because of its real commitment to saving the environment, and its readiness in this context to look at all kinds of progressive alternatives. This spirit of radicalism recognizes that if the capitalism’s multiple crises today are not addressed in collectivist, cooperative, democratic, and internationalist ways, then the ultra-nationalist, racist, sexist and homophobic spirit of the new far right will take the lead in expressing the frustrations with what liberal democratic politics has become, offering little more than competing teams of elites offering variations of neoliberal austerity.

This is what makes this conjuncture so pregnant with possibilities. Formerly apolitical and even anti-political activists seem, on the basis of the experience of organizing through loose networks, to have learned that there are limits to a politics of protest that does not build cumulative political and organizational capacities. There is an increasing sense that we are entering a new phase of political struggle, which has given old and new activists a fresh perspective on the possibility of engaging in electoral politics, entering the state, and breaking with both neoliberal austerity and minimal efforts to address climate change.

Electoral Politics versus the Movements?

For many activists and even some socialists, the notion of engaging with electoral politics has long been anathema, an old diversion. They remain adamant that building the movements, apart from political alignments, remains the key to social change. The siren call of the NDP and electoral politics is a curse to be avoided at all costs. From past history, there is, of course, more than a little validity to this. But it may well include its own traps and delusions, not least about changing the world without taking power.

To begin with, this perspective shields the movements (other than the unions, which it doesn’t hesitate to criticize) from serious appraisal of their politics and strategies, and exaggerates their current strengths. The hard truth, however, is that mass social movements in Canada (other than some First Nations movements intersecting with specific sovereignty struggles) are at an ebb that has few precedents. This isn’t to deny the energy and commitment of movement activists, and their often remarkable achievements in spite of limited resources. Rather, it is to soberly acknowledge the limits of existing movements in terms of laying the conditions for a substantive reversal of neoliberalism, challenging capitalism, or in significantly recruiting and developing a generation of activists who might do so in the future.

Choosing between electoral politics and movements is, moreover, a false choice. On the one hand, sectional movements cannot win on their own against the combined power of capital and the state. If protests inevitably come up against the limits of ‘throwing stones’ at the state; if the state needs to be entered to effect change and block reaction; and if insurrection is discounted as a way of coming to power; then parliamentary processes and the struggle over remaking state institutions cannot be avoided. On the other hand, this historical moment seems characterized by polarized and limited options, given the terrain of electoral politics and the increasingly authoritarian neoliberal practices of the state, as the middle ground is brushed aside by the aggressiveness of all sections of capital. It is clearer than ever that electoral politics cannot deliver on any substantive promises unless backed by the deepest mass movements, not least that of a renewed and revitalized labour movement. Parliamentary and extra-parliamentary political mobilizations, elections and movements, are not in opposition but inextricably intertwined in the struggle over power, structural reforms and revolutionary ruptures.

Part of the confusion here is rooted in the NDP’s utter reduction of politics and political organization to a total focus on elections. The opposition to such ‘electoralism’ is then mistakenly equated to an opposition to elections per se. The point is that elections remain critical moments of political mobilization, of tests of organizational capacity, and of ideological contestation. But they are still far from, in capitalist democracies, the sum total of all politics. In this regard in Canada, the issue isn’t electoral politics but the content and kind of politics that the NDP represents. The challenge is to contemplate and put in motion organizational forms, political alliances, and political parties of ‘a new kind’: organizations and parties that are committed to radical change, structured around the idea that developing strong and autonomous social and labour movements at the base, are a condition for making parliamentary politics relevant and a crucial dimension of the ability to carry through transformative social change.

The NDP and the Project of Transcending Capitalism

The distinction between social democratic parties like the NDP that organize to win elections and pursue policies of modest redistribution of incomes and opportunities within capitalism, and parties committed to transcending capitalism and realizing an alternative society no longer governed by the logics of profit and endless accumulation, does not lie primarily on the terrain of the policies articulated. It lies in the vision each ascribes to the organizational capacities being formed, and the willingness to engage in political mobilizations inside, against and outside the state. In capitalist societies, all reforms involve compromises on policies in trying to make social change. The crucial differences lie in compromises that accept the ‘reality’ of the existing political terrain as given, and compromises that are part of a determined longer-term goal to develop the popular capacities to moves beyond that particular ‘reality’.

The truncated vision of social democracy – with its rejection of a world beyond capitalism – leads directly to the truncated politics of diminishing expectations and limited mobilizations. This fits so well with parties organized exclusively around electoralism. What is needed, even in relation to a more immediate objective of breaking from neoliberalism, is a larger political project oriented to developing the popular understandings, organizational capacities, and institutional supports for coming to power with the will and ability to transcend capitalism. This cannot emerge at the level of individual choices and attitudes. It can only come out of building socialist organizations that see this as a collective task, rooted concretely in local communities, and willing to engage in the struggle over state power.

Social democrats claim, in dissenting from more radical interventions, that they are being ‘practical’, and that anyone who challenges them from more socialist perspectives within their parties are being ‘unrealistic’, if not ‘dreamers and wreckers’. The problem, however, is that with modern capitalism having in increasingly closed the ‘middle ground’ of social compromise, being practical has come to mean accommodating to neoliberal globalization (with its material linkages to fossil fuels and ecological dumping). This is repeatedly demonstrated when social democrats have come to office: they soon become complicit in the lowering of popular expectations, disorganizing social movements, and pursuing a ‘kinder neoliberalism’. The outcome, ironically, is to act in a way that is the essence of being impractical by often campaigning on worthy goals without building the capacities to get there.

In this light, Sanders has made a remarkable run with his call for a ‘political revolution’, but this cannot in fact be achieved within the Democratic Party. The question American activists will soon have to address is what other kind of party can build on the expectations raised and potentials revealed by the Sanders campaign. For his part, Corbyn has also showed the staying power and renewed attraction of the Bennite socialists who were long thought to be vanquished within the Labour Party, but most of the parliamentary wing and much of the party’s organizational apparatus see him as an interloper, to be tolerated only until he can be gotten rid of. So, here too, the question of breaking with social democracy will surely surface. It is hard enough to contemplate transcending capitalism within a party actually committed to an alternative vision; it is impossible to imagine doing so within a party not united around that goal.

The Socialist Left and the Leap Manifesto

What then might socialists conclude about the Leap Manifesto, the NDP, and the project of transcending capitalism?

First, the Leap Manifesto represents a significant opening for the Left in Canada, as the discussions it has already engendered, and will further engender, clearly show. The anti-neoliberal thrust of its proposals deserve to be endorsed and supported. And in the spirit of the Manifesto’s call for genuinely discussing and debating the present opportunities and dangers, this will leave plenty of space for also addressing the limits of the manifesto, including the implicit expectation that even its modest goals can be implemented without profound transformations in state organization and social structure.

“

It above all means joining in particular campaigns, whether against privatization, barriers to union organizing and new global free trade and investment pacts, or for collective and decommodified services, such as free transit, a living wage, and the kinds of environmental alternatives advanced in the Leap Manifesto.”

Second, the caution exhibited by spokespeople for the Leap Manifesto in engaging with the NDP so as not to become fully absorbed will be important to maintain. It is vital that the Leap Manifesto initiative retain its independence, especially during the coming leadership contest. If the NDP chooses a leader supportive of the Manifesto, this will likely lead – as developments elsewhere suggest – to an energetic burst of new entrants into the NDP. Those of us sceptical of the possibility of transforming the NDP (and aware of the utterly dismal record of ‘entryism’) cannot help but have mixed feelings about this. But this kind of politicization – which we could not in any case stop – should be welcomed even if it initially fosters illusions about the NDP. It makes no sense attacking those joining the NDP in search of a new politics. The policies forwarded by the Manifesto, particularly around ecology, will provide space for those outside the party to engage with them, while offering a constructive critique of the NDP’s limits.

Third, there is the question of what constructive engagement with the Leap Manifesto might mean for the wider range of radical activists across Canada. Addressing this is essential to revive the significant militant political resistance to neoliberalism that took place over almost three decades – from the broad popular movement against free trade, to the labour movements’ Days of Action, to the mobilizations against the FTAA in Quebec City, and to the G20 confrontation in Toronto. Any space that now opens up for such activist militancy needs to be seized. This means organizing forums and deploying the array of publications of the Left in Canada to further debates so differing views can be aired. It above all means joining in particular campaigns, whether against privatization, barriers to union organizing and new global free trade and investment pacts, or for collective and decommodified services, such as free transit, a living wage, and the kinds of environmental alternatives advanced in the Leap Manifesto.

Finally, it is well beyond time to once again take up the question of what will be required in an explicitlysocialist project of transcending capitalism in Canada, given the long retreat from this on the part of labour and social movements as well as the NDP. Re-establishing a socialist alternative in Canadian politics, and linking up with what is happening in this respect internationally, will have to involve building new institutions to regenerate and defend socialist ideas and strategy. This is not because new socialist parties will finally become the genuine storehouses of the ‘truth’. Rather, they will need to be seen as strategic spaces in which we can collectively come up with better socialist ideas and alternatives, and through experience and experimentation improve them further. It above all means ‘making socialists’ in the sense of developing activists committed to the necessarily long-term struggle of ending capitalism and to fostering the broadest popular analytical and organizational capacities to achieve this. •

Interview With João Pedro Stédile

The economist and leader of the Landless Workers’ Movement (MST) of Brazil, Joao Pedro Stédile, affirmed that left-wing forces won’t allow the Parliamentarian right to fulfill their wish to force Dilma Rousseff out of the presidency to reinstall neoliberalism in the country.Stédile was interviewed byLibreRed
, where this article was first published, and the English translation onThe Dawn
website.

LibreRed (LR): What will be the reaction of the Brazilian people and the MST in particular if Dilma Rousseff is destituted?

Thousands rallied in major cities across Brazil on May Day to support the embattled President Dilma Rousseff.

João Pedro Stédile (JPS): First of all, we’re confident that it’s possible to stop the coup in process now that it has reached the Senate. We believe that the government has a greater representation in the Senate than in the Chamber of Deputies [where the vote was in favor of the impeachment], the Senators themselves are older, more experienced in politics and know that a Parliamentary coup like the ones that took place in Honduras or Paraguay would lead Brazil to a deeper crisis.

But if this coup is consolidated in the Senate, we, as part of the movements that are organized in the Popular Brazil Front won’t hesitate in denying any kind of legitimacy to a Michel Temer–Eduardo Cunha government. It would be an illegitimate government completely stained by corruption. It’s now public that they gave out a lot of money to get the votes of the deputies. Besides denying their legitimacy, and not participating in any process, we will keep taking to the streets to exert pressure and lead people to become conscious of what will happen.

As for now, on April 29 – next Friday – there will be mobilizations in several cities and on May 1 we want there to be a massive protest action. For that, we almost certainly will coordinate with several union organizations – there are eight of them, and only one supports the coup. We are in discussions with the seven unions (that are with the people), the possibility of doing a general strike before the vote in the Senate. We want to point out to the businessmen that despite their money and their plan to impose the comeback of neoliberalism and the subordination of our economy to the interests of yankee companies, we the working-class are the ones that produce riches. And if we make a general stoppage, it will be a signal to them that says “you may want to increase your profits and your exploitation again, but those who produce the riches in this country in the industry and agriculture are we, and we won’t allow a coup that destroys democracy in our country.”

LR: Now the right is saying, in Brazil and in the rest of the continent and the world, that this is not a coup but the mere application of Constitutional laws.

JPS: Sure, that’s what they said in Honduras, as well as in Paraguay, and it’s a trap. In Brazilian law, there is a provision that says that if a President commits a crime of responsibility or corruption against the country, the Parliament can punish and expel him or her. But in fact President Dilma didn’t commit any crime at all, the accusation they used against her in the process they started in the Parliament has to do with a mechanism of public accounting that the Government uses to meet its social obligations in health, education, and seeked other funds that were in public banks or in the provision for other areas. But this is not a crime, it’s an artifice of any government, even Michel Temer did it himself when he was in the Presidency of the Republic, replacing the President, and in the states of Brazil there are 24 governors, several of them from the right, but also from the center, left and any other ideological convictions, that use that form of accounting.

Therefore, there is no crime, and if there were, then Temer would have to be ousted too, and that’s why we denounce that a single innocent person can’t be judged for an action that was made by two partners: President and Vice President. But the bottom of the issue is not removing the President or not, apart from being a true blow to democracy, the problem is that we are going through a serious economic crisis and the capitalists’ way to deal with that crisis and restore their profit rate is to return to the neoliberal model, that is, to take away workers’ rights, hand out our resources, such as oil, mining, water, and biodiversity to transnational companies and keep interest rates high – President Dilma was an obstacle to that.

Temer has already announced his government plan, which is completely neoliberal. That’s why the Brazilian people’s organizations say that Temer is to Brazil what Mauricio Macri is to Argentina, but the difference resides in that Macri earned the votes to become President and he didn’t. Not only that, but he’s so unpopular that in recent polls 80 per cent of the people said that they don’t want him, and that if he ran for President, he’d get only one per cent of the vote in Brazil. That’s the state of affairs: it’s a coup against democracy.

LR: How come President Dilma chose him as Vice President?

JPS: That’s the sort of moves that we in the MST always criticized. In reality, Lula (in both of his terms) and Dilma always proposed a formula for class conciliation, like in Chile, so there were always seats reserved for sectors of the Brazilian bourgeoisie.

When Lula was President, that strategy worked well because his Vice President was a nationalist, serious and even honest businessman from the textile industry, whose business depended also on the internal market and therefore he was interested in having wealth distribution because that way he could sell more, but Mr. Temer is a lumpen bourgeoise. His only role is to defend the bourgeoisie, but he’s not actually a bourgeoise per se, and because of that, because he’s a lumpen, he betrayed the President. When the President publicly spoke to denounce that betrayal, the right started a process in the Supreme Federal Court to prevent her speech from being broadcast on the national network, to silence her speech against this man and the whole coup that was being schemed by more than a hundred corrupt Parliamentarians, who are themselves being investigated by the Supreme Federal Court. There’s no explanation as for why, to this day, the judicial power hasn’t had the courage to accelerate those processes, because most of the Parliamentarians that voted against Dilma could even go to jail for the millions they stole from public coffers, and in the form of kickbacks from companies.

LR: As an economist, could you explain how much the current economic crisis weighed in the current political crisis of Brazil?

JPS: The economic crisis is the reason why the class conciliation ceased to be possible, because when Lula was President, he designed a conciliation that was based on three pillars: firstly, to make the economy grow through industry (which he accomplished), secondly, to recover the role of the state of making productive investments such as education and health, to better the living conditions of the population and thirdly, to distribute income through an increase in the minimum wage. What happened? With the international crisis of capitalism the economy of Brazil, as a country on the periphery of capitalism, suffered greatly, and for three years the economy hasn’t grown.

Twenty years ago industry accounted for 50 per cent of our GDP and now, due to deindustrialization and competition from Chinese and U.S. companies, national industry accounts for only 9 per cent of the GDP, and there’s a deep economic crisis that can only be solved by recovering, again, the role of the state, controlling financial capital so that instead of accumulating wealth through speculation, the state can use that money to make productive investments in the industry and agriculture sectors, oriented toward the internal market. With that, the economy would grow again, and we’d have a new role for the workforce (because nowadays we have an unemployment rate of 10 per cent) and we could have social programs again.

The political crisis we’re going through is a consequence of the elites trying to get back the state and restore neoliberalism, but the working class isn’t going to accept that. It’s going to take years to get out of this, because the only way out of a crisis of this magnitude is through an agreement between social classes – not just parties – over a new model of the country, that can be hegemonic in most of society.

And now, at this moment, there’s no project being discussed in the country, not even within any of the classes – neither the bourgeoisie nor the petite bourgeoisie, nor the working class, have a clear project for the country. This is why we’re in this confusion and why the bourgeoisie is stupid enough – because they’re subordinated to the interests of imperialism – to think it’s enough to change the President of the Republic to magically solve the problems of the economy, but that’s not true. On the contrary, that would deepen the contradictions of inequality, deepen the institutional crisis and, hopefully, send the masses back to the streets so that they, with their political force, debate a new project for the country.

LR: Have some sectors of the working class, that have benefited by the social policies of Dilma and Lula, been co-opted by the right in Brazil?

JPS: It wouldn’t be fair to say they’ve been co-opted, because in that process of mobilization there was a sector of the petite bourgeoisie that went out on the streets to defend the coup. But they are the eight per cent of the population, and we, the left, went out on the streets and even in greater numbers, but we were all militants, organized sectors, the mediation between the masses and the leaders. The masses are still silent, still afraid. They haven’t mobilized yet but they were also not co-opted by the right.

But why is it so? At that point we have to be self-critical, because during the eight years that Lula governed, there was almost no work to elevate the level of political and cultural consciousness of those masses, who got better policies and better salaries but without a change in their views, and the government did nothing to change that. Unlike Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia, there was no effort to break with the monopolies in communications, therefore the TV station O Globo puts garbage in people’s heads every day and they remain perplexed while they watch the political game as if it was just another soap opera.

LR: Let’s conclude with a message from you to the people of Latin America. What would you like to say to them?

JPS: Times are hard but we mustn’t be discouraged or pessimistic, as the great thinkers of Latin America told us. We have to be pessimistic in our analysis but optimistic toward the future. It’s true that our continent, as everything else, is in crisis, but that’s not the fault of a leader, a government or a party.

Capitalism is to blame – the capitalist way of organizing production and life in society is in crisis around the world and because we in Latin America are in the periphery of world capitalism, capitalists see our continent as a bigger opportunity to dominate natural resources, markets and the workforce. These are hard times because we have to confront the empire, but this brings contradictions.

It’s time to put more energy into bringing awareness and organizing people, because in the coming years we’ll see a new, rising, mass movement on our continent and in this movement there will be new liberation projects and new leaders, and we’ll surely see the dream of Chavez, Martí, and Che come to life again. A project that unifies the dreams of Latin America. We must have hope because we have to fight every day. Those who fight, always win. •

Why do these thousands of people want Ms. Rousseff to leave office? An eruption of corruption scandals that implicate the entire political elite comes at a time of Brazil’s economic stagnation. Brazil currently suffers its worst recession in half a century, with economic growth shrinking. Low commodity prices and slack demand from China are the main authors of this downturn. No relief is on the horizon, since China is not likely to expand its purchases. Nor, therefore, will commodity prices rise higher. Reliant upon both, an exit for Brazil’s crisis in that direction is closed. The PT, in power from 2002, had not been able to diversify the economy and so was vulnerable to commodity prices. Economist Alfredo Saad-Filho calls this a “confluence of dissatisfactions,” drawing in those with immediate worries — rising bus fares— and those with much greater anxieties — the loss of power of the dominant classes.

Angering the elite

What is striking about the protests against the Rousseff government is that these are not coming mainly from the slums — the favelas — of Brazil or from the industrial working class. In March last year, Brazil’s college educated, upper middle class went out onto the streets for a series of marches against the government. Luiz Carlos Bresser-Pereira, a former Finance Minister from the 1980s, characterised these protests as “collective hatred on the part of the elites, of the rich, against a party and a president.” What motivated the demonstrators, he said, was not worry, but “hatred.” What do the Brazilian elite hate about the government of the PT?

The PT has pushed a broad agenda to give capitalism a human face. Wretched poverty in parts of Brazil had to be ameliorated by a social welfare programme known as Bolsa Família. The World Bank said that this programme has “changed the lives of millions in Brazil.” For cash payments, Brazil’s impoverished families pledge to keep their children in school and take them for regular medical check-ups. The government argued that Bolsa Família would enhance the immediate lives of the poor — with the cash payments — and would break the cycle of intergenerational poverty — through education and health care.

Almost 50 million Brazilians — a quarter of the population — have benefited from Bolsa Família. Last year, the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics announced that extreme poverty has been eradicated in the country. But, at that announcement, the institute pointed out that the budgetary cuts to the programme would reverse the trend. A third of the funds allocated to Bolsa Família had been removed from the 2016 budget. This is an indicator of the financial trials of the government.

What the elite hated was the rise in minimum wages, the expansion of rights to workers and the privileges now given to the working class for entry into public universities. Benefits to the working class in Brazil open up the social question of racial inequality. Brazil, a former slave state, has never really come to terms with the legacies of slavery and racism. Under the PT, issues of racial discrimination and the costs of racism on the workers became part of the national conversation. This was anathema to the elite.

Habits of coups

Over the course of the past century, at regular intervals, populist political movements have come to the fore in Brazil to challenge the iron grip of the elite. Each time, the people rally behind these leaders, the elite — with the assistance of the military and the United States — has undermined the revolt of the favelas and the countryside. Presidents Getúlio Vargas and João Goulart became standard-bearers of this popular frustration, but both had to be removed — Vargas by suicide in 1954 and Goulart by military coup in 1964. In both cases, the combination of the established dominant classes, the military and the U.S. created a crisis that overwhelmed the country and dispatched the populist leaders. Fear that this is part of the equation in Brazil today is not unfounded. It is etched into Brazil’s history.

Coups need not come from the barracks any longer. The media is sufficient. In Brazil, the Globo network — 50 years old — now controls more than half of the media — television networks and influential newspapers — including O Globo. “There is no other means of communication with similar influence in the country,” Professor Beatriz Bissio of the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro tells me. The owner of the network, Dr. Roberto Marinho, has a very close alliance with the military regime. His channels have been fulminating against the Rousseff government, urging on the protests in the service not of anti-corruption but against the PT.

Issue of corruption

In Brazil, a familiar refrain is “the system is not corrupt; corruption is the system.” Systematic corruption has eaten into wide swathes of Brazil’s politicians, not only from among the prominent leaders of the PT but also of its opposition, including Aécio Neves who ran for president against Ms. Rousseff in 2014. Vast profits in the major government utilities, Eletrobras and Petrobras, provided opportunities to politicians for bribes. Politicians from PT did not resist the temptation. But they are not alone.

The media went after the PT as if it was the only one which was complicit in the corruption scandals. They ignored the corruption scandals of the right-wing opposition. Datafolha has done regular surveys of dissatisfaction in Brazil. Over a third of the population finds that corruption is their major grouse, although the rest of those surveyed complained about a lack of access to health care and education as well as jobs. The media is not interested in these complaints. They come to the heart of the PT programme. Much easier to poke a finger at “corruption,” an idea with an emotional appeal to people whose livelihood weakens as they see the elite becoming immune from the crisis.

The Lula factor

Ms. Rousseff, unlike Mr. Lula, did not cultivate a close link with the people. Compelled to make budgetary changes, she did not reach out to the public to explain the problems. Attacked by the media, Ms. Rousseff isolated herself from her supporters. Confusion led to disillusionment. Mr. Lula, from the factory, and Ms. Rousseff, from the prison, developed a party — the PT — that grew from Brazil’s powerful social movements, such as the Landless Workers’ Movement (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra, or MST). Ms. Rousseff reached out to Mr. Lula to revive connections to the social movements. He is temperamentally of the trade unions, a salty man with popularity among the working class and peasantry.

But Mr. Lula had been under investigation as part of the Petrolão (Car Wash) scandal — money laundering around Petrobras. His role here is small scale compared to the other outrages. The detention of Mr. Lula and the release of taped phone conversations between him and Ms. Rousseff suggest a wider conspiracy at work here. It is in the habit of Brazil’s elite to foment such discord to prevent any threat to its stability. Mr. Lula’s return in a time of economic crisis might have signalled a sharp left turn from the PT. It had no other choice but to move in that direction. It would be suicidal for the PT to become the party of austerity. Mr. Lula’s brief was to help Ms. Rousseff change course. This is what the elite found abominable. Ms. Rousseff’s offer of a cabinet post to Mr. Lula would have immunised him from prosecution. A judge has now blocked the appointment.

On Friday, a million people joined the Popular Front of Brazil to repeat Mr. Lula’s call — não vai ter golpe, there’ll be no coup. The people, as the MST put it, went to the streets to defend democracy. This protest stands against the coup. Whether the emergence of these popular protests will change the ugly dynamic in Brazil is to be seen. Much is at stake in this important South American country.

It’s Class War, and Their Class is Winning

Alfredo Saad Filho

Every so often, the bourgeois political system runs into crisis. The machinery of the state jams; the veils of consent are torn asunder and the tools of power appear disturbingly naked. Brazil is living through one of those moments: it is dreamland for social scientists; a nightmare for everyone else.

Supporters of former Brazilian president Lula da Silva confront police officers in front of Lula’s apartment in Sao Bernardo do Campo, Brazil, 4 March 2016.

Dilma Rousseff was elected President in 2010, with a 56-44 per cent majority against the right-wing neoliberal PSDB (Brazilian Social Democratic Party) opposition candidate. She was reelected four years later with a diminished yet convincing majority of 52-48 per cent, or a majority of 3.5 million votes.

Dilma’s second victory sparked a heated panic among the neoliberal and U.S.-aligned opposition. The fourth consecutive election of a President affiliated to the centre-left PT (Workers’ Party) was bad news for the opposition, because it suggested that PT founder Luís Inácio Lula da Silvacould return in 2018. Lula had been President between 2003 and 2010, and when he left office his approval ratings hit 90 per cent, making him the most popular leader in Brazil’s history. This likely sequence suggested that the opposition could be out of federal office for a generation. The opposition immediately rejected the outcome of the vote. No credible complaints could be made, but no matter; it was resolved that Dilma Rousseff would be overthrown by any means necessary. To understand what happened next, we must return to 2011.

Booming Economy

Dilma inherited from Lula a booming economy. Alongside China and other middle-income countries, Brazil bounced back vigorously after the global crisis. GDP expanded by 7.5 per cent in 2010, the fastest rate in decades, and Lula’s hybrid neoliberal-neodevelopmental economic policies seemed to have hit the perfect balance: sufficiently orthodox to enjoy the confidence of large sections of the internal bourgeoisie, and heterodox enough to deliver the greatest redistribution of income and privilege in Brazil’s recorded history, thereby securing the support of the formal and informal working class. For example, the minimum wage rose by 70 per cent and 21 million (mostly low-paid) jobs were created in the 2000s. Social provision increased significantly, including the world-famousBolsa Família conditional cash transfer programme, and the government supported a dramatic expansion of higher education, including quotas for blacks and state school pupils. For the first time, the poor could access education as well as income and bank loans. They proceeded to study, earn and borrow, and to occupy spaces previously monopolized by the upper middle class: airports, shopping malls, banks, private health facilities and roads, that were clogged up by cheap cars purchased in 72 easy payments. The government coalition enjoyed a comfortable majority in a highly fragmented Congress, and Lula’s legendary political skills managed to keep most of the political elite on side.

Then everything started to go wrong. Dilma Rousseff was chosen by Lula as his successor. She was a steady pair of hands and a competent manager and enforcer. She was also the most left-wing President of Brazil since João Goulart, who was overthrown by a military coup in 1964. However, she had no political track record and, it would later become evident, lacked essential qualities for the job.

Once elected, Dilma shifted economic policies further away from neoliberalism. The government intervened in several sectors seeking to promote investment and output, and put intense pressure on the financial system to reduce interest rates, which lowered credit costs and the government’s debt service, releasing funds for consumption and investment. A virtuous circle of growth and distribution seemed possible. Unfortunately, the government miscalculated the lasting impact of the global crisis. The U.S. and European economies stagnated, China’s growth faltered, and the so-called commodity supercycle vanished. Brazil’s current account was ruined. Even worse, the U.S., UK, Japan and the Eurozone introduced quantitative easing policies that led to massive capital outflows toward the middle income countries. Brazil faced a tsunami of foreign exchange, that overvalued the currency and bred deindustrialization. Economic growth rates fell precipitously.

The government doubled its interventionist bets through public investment, subsidised loans and tax rebates, which ravaged the public accounts. Their frantic and seemingly random interventionism scared away the internal bourgeoisie: the local magnates were content to run government through the Workers’ Party, but would not be managed by a former political prisoner who overtly despised them. And she despised not only the capitalists: the President had little inclination to speak to social movements, left organizations, lobbies, allied parties, elected politicians, or her own ministers. The economy stalled and Dilma’s political alliances shrank, in a fast-moving dance of destruction. The neoliberal opposition scented blood.

The Opposition

For years, the opposition to the PT had been rudderless. The PSDB had nothing appealing to offer while, as is traditional in Brazil, most mainstream parties were gangs of bandits extorting the government for selfish gain. The situation was so desperate that the mainstream media overtly (!) took the mantle of opposition, and started driving the anti-PT agenda, literally instructing the politicians on what to do next. In the meantime, the radical left remained small and relatively powerless. It was despised by the hegemonic ambitions of the PT.

The confluence of dissatisfactions became an irresistible force in 2013. The mainstream media is rabidly neoliberal and utterly ruthless: as the equivalent would be if Fox News and its clones dominated the entire U.S. media, including all TV chains and the main newspapers. The upper middle class was their obliging target, as they had economic, social and political reasons to be unhappy. Upper middle class jobs were declining, with 4.3 million posts paying between 5 and 10 minimum wages vanishing in the 2000s. In the meantime, the bourgeoisie was doing well, and the poor advanced fast: even domestic servants got labour rights. The upper middle class felt both squeezed and excluded from their privileged spaces, as was explained above. It was also dislocated from the state. Since Lula’s election, the state bureaucracy had been populated by thousands of cadres appointed by the PT and the left, to the detriment of ‘better educated’, whiter and, presumably, more deserving upper middle class competitors. Mass demonstrations erupted for the first time in June 2013, triggered by left-wing opposition against a bus fare increase in São Paulo. Those demonstrations were fanned by the media and captured by the upper middle-class and the right, and they shook the government – but, clearly, not enough to motivate them to save themselves. The demonstrations returned two years later. And then in 2016.

Now, reader, follow this. After the decimation of the state apparatus by the pre-Lula neoliberal administrations, the PT sought to rebuild selected areas of the bureaucracy. Among them, for reasons that Lula may soon have plenty of time to review, the Federal Police and the Federal Prosecution Office (FPO). In addition, for overtly ‘democratic’ reasons, but more likely related to corporatism and capacity to make media-friendly noise, the Federal Police and the FPO were granted inordinate autonomy; the former through mismanagement, while the latter has become the fourth power in the Republic, separately – and checking – the Executive, the Legislature and the Judiciary. The abundance of qualified jobseekers led to the colonization of these well-paying jobs by upper middle class cadres. They were now in a Constitutionally secure position, and could chew up the hand that that fed them, while loudly demanding, through the media, additional resources to maul the rest of the PT’s body.

Corruption was the ideal pretext. Since it lost the first democratic presidential elections, in 1989, the PT moved steadily toward the political centre. In order to lure the upper middle class and the internal bourgeoisie, the PT neutralized or expelled the party’s left wing, disarmed the trade unions and social movements, signed up to the neoliberal economic policies pursued by the previous administration, and imposed a dour conformity that killed off any alternative leadership. Only Lula’s sun can shine in the party; everyone else was incinerated. This strategy was eventually successful and, in 2002, ‘Little Lula Peace and Love’ was elected President. (I kid you not, reader: this was one of his campaign slogans.)

For years the PT had thrived in opposition as the only honest political party in Brazil. This strategy worked, but it contained a lethal contradiction: in order to win expensive elections, manage the Executive and build a workable majority in Congress, the PT would haveto get its hands dirty. There is no other way to ‘do’ politics in Brazilian democracy.

We only need one more element, and our mixture will be ready to combust. Petrobras is Brazil’s largest corporation and one of the world’s largest oil companies. The firm has considerable technical and economic capacity, and it was responsible for the discovery, in 2006, of gigantic ‘pre-salt’ deep sea oilfields hundreds of miles from the Brazilian coast. Dilma Rousseff, as Lula’s Minister of Mines and Energy, was responsible for imposing exploration contracts in these areas including large privileges for Petrobras. This legislation was vigorously opposed by PSDB, the media, the oil majors and the U.S. government.

The Investigation

In 2014, Sergio Moro, a previously unknown judge in Curitiba, a Southern state capital, started investigating a currency dealer suspected of tax evasion. This case eventually spiralled into a deathly threat against Dilma Rousseff’s government. Judge Moro is good-looking, well-educated, white and well paid. He is also very close to the PSDB. His Lavajato (Carwash) operation unveiled an extraordinary tale of large-scale bribery, plunder of public assets and funding for all major political parties, centred on the relationship between Petrobras and some of its main suppliers – precisely the stalwarts of the PT in the oil, shipbuilding and construction industries. It was the perfect combination, at the right time. Judge Moro’s cause was picked up by the media, and he obligingly steered it to inflict maximum damage to the PT, while shielding the other parties. Politicians connected to the PT and some of Brazil’s wealthiest businessmen were jailed summarily, and would remain locked up until they agreed a plea bargain implicating others. A new phase ofLavajato would ensnare them, and so on. The operation is now in its 25th phase; many have already collaborated, and those who refused to do so have received long prison sentences, to coerce them back into line while their appeals are pending. The media turned Judge Moro into a hero; he can do no wrong, and attempts to contest his sprawling powers are met with derision or worse. He is now the most powerful person in the Republic, above Dilma, Lula, the speakers of the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate (both sinking in corruption and other scandals), and the Ministers of the Supreme Court, which have either been silenced or quietly support Moro’s crusade.

Petrobras has been paralyzed by the scandal, bringing down the entire oil chain. Private investment has collapsed because of political uncertainty and an investment strike against Dilma’s government. Congress has turned against the government, and the Judiciary is overwhelmingly hostile. After years of sniping, the media has been delighted to see Lula fall under the Lavajato juggernaut, even if the allegations seem stretched: does he actually own a beach-side apartment which his family does not use, is that small farm really his, who paid for the lake and the mobile phone masts nearby, and how about those pedalos? No matter: Moro detained Lula for questioning on 4 March. He was taken to São Paulo airport and would have been flown to Curitiba, but the Judge’s plan was halted by fear of the political fallout. Lula was questioned at the airport, then released. He was livid.

In order to shore up her crumbling administration and protect Lula from prosecution, Dilma Rousseff appointed Lula her Chief of Staff (the President’s Chief of Staff has ministerial status and can be prosecuted only by the Supreme Court). The right-wing conspiracy went into overdrive. Moro (illegally) released the (illegal) recording of a conversation between President Dilma and Lula, pertaining to his investiture. Once suitably misinterpreted, their dialogue was presented as ‘proof’ of a conspiracy to protect Lula from Moro’s canine determination to jail him. Large right-wing upper middle class masses poured into the streets, furiously, on 13 March. Five days later, the left responded with large – but not quite as large – demonstrations of its own against the unfolding coup. In the meantime, Lula’s appointment was suspended by a judicial measure, then restored, then suspended again. The case is now in the Supreme Court. At the moment, he is not a Minister, and his head is well-positioned on the block. Moro can arrest him at short notice.

The Coup

Why is this a coup? Because despite aggressive scrutiny, no Presidential crime warranting an impeachment has emerged. Nevertheless, the political right has thrown the kitchen sink at Dilma Rousseff. They rejected the outcome of the 2014 elections and appealed against her alleged campaign finance violations, which would remove from power both Dilma and the Vice-President – now, chief conspirator – Michel Temer (strangely enough, his case has been parked). The right simultaneously started impeachment procedures in Congress. The media has attacked the government viciously for years, the neoliberal economists plead for a new administration to ‘restore market confidence’, and the right will resort to street violence if it becomes necessary. Finally, the judicial charade against the PT has broken all the rules of legality, yet it is cheered on by the media, the right and even by Supreme Court Justices.

Yet… the coup de grâce is taking a long time coming. In the olden days, the military would have already moved in. Today, the Brazilian military are defined more by their nationalism (a danger to the neoliberal onslaught) than by their right-wing faith and, anyway, the Soviet Union is no more. Under neoliberalism, coups d’état must follow legal niceties, as was shown in Honduras, in 2009, and in Paraguay, in 2012.

Brazil is likely to join their company, but not just now: large sections of capital want to restore the hegemony of neoliberalism; those who once supported the PT’s national development strategy have fallen into line; the media is howling so loudly it has become impossible to think clearly, and most of the upper middle class has descended into a fascist hatred for the PT, the left, the poor, and the black. Their disorderly hatred has become so intense that even PSDB politicians are booed in anti-government demonstrations. And, despite the relentless attack, the left remains reasonably strong, as was demonstrated on 18th March. The right and the elite are powerful and ruthless – but they are also afraid of the consequences of their own daring.

There is no simple resolution to the political, economic and social crises in Brazil. Dilma Rousseff has lost political support and the confidence of capital, and she is likely to be removed from office in the coming days. However, attempts to imprison Lula could have unpredictable implications and, even if Dilma and Lula are struck off the political map, a renewed neoliberal hegemony cannot automatically restore political stability or economic growth, or secure the social prominence that the upper middle class craves. Despite strong media support for the impending coup, the PT, other left parties and many radical social movements remain strong. Further escalation is inevitable. Watch this space. •

Alfredo Saad Filho is Professor of Political Economy at the SOAS Department of Development Studies. His research interests include the political economy of neoliberalism, industrial policy, alternative macroeconomic policies, and the labour theory of value and its applications.